AMERICAN CHOP SUEY is a pretty far cry from the similarly-named Chinese-American dish. This combination of crushed tomatoes (not gravy or any other form of pasta sauce), pasta and meat is easy to eat with a spoon and it's extremely simple to keep making more and more and more, given sufficiently large cooking equipment. As such, it's ideal for campouts full of hungry, whiny, loud, obnoxious, greedy, annoying CUB SCOUTS. Ahhh, such fond memories of being one myself.
This is how I make the stuff. There's some weirdo way of making it involving tomato soup and tomato paste and tomato sauce but that's far more complicated than is necessary.
Here's wotcha need:
Ingredients
- n (n being an integer > 0) pounds of elbow macaroni, or other type of macaroni good for eating with a spoon, e.g. ditalini, orzo, itty-bitty shells, NOT spaghetti!
- n (yes, the same n) pound of hamburger or vegetarian substitute
- n 12 ounce cans of peeled, ground tomatoes. I use PASTENE brand out of 22 years of brand loyalty.
- n / 2 onions. This number can be a fraction.
- A tiny bit of olive oil.
- Salt, pepper, any other spices you want, and sugar (for the kiddies)
TO START, make sure your hamburger is thawed. If not, make it so.
Next, fill up a large-as-necessary pot with enough water to cook however much macaroni you have. Add salt (to raise the boiling point) and olive oil (to stop everything from sticking together). Now add the macaroni.
Now, chop up the onions and throw them in a frying pan along with the meat. Brown up the hamburger. Feel your stomach riot against the walls of your torso as it tries to break free of its corporal shackles and consume.
Once the macaroni is done, drain it and put it back in the pot, and then add the tomatoes. I prefer to water down the tomatoes a bit by filling each tomato can halfway with water then dumping it in. Take the onions and meat from the frying pan and dump those into the pot as well. Add a bit of sugar (like I said, for the kiddies).
Let the whole mix start to bubble a bit, making sure to stir so nothing burns to the bottom, then serve. This recipe makes enough for 4n normal appetites or 2n typical mkbs. | 
